Breuvage makes me think of magical potions or like medicine maybe.
You could say abreuver un chien, but in my dialect at least it would sound formal. Donner à boire is the common way to say that.
French
- Thread starter Serenus
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You could say abreuver un chien, but in my dialect at least it would sound formal. Donner à boire is the common way to say that.
In my (French) use and understanding, marron isn't synonymous of brun, nor brun of marron, so one cannot be used instead of the other.
Brun is a colour adjective, which covers many shades.
Marron isn't a colour adjective nor even an adjective (that is why it doesn't agree in gender nor in number): marron is the noun for "chestnut" whose acceptations includes a common metonymous use, as an apposed noun, to name the specific colour of a chestnut, which is red-brown (brun roux). Marron is a specific shade of brun. All marrons are bruns, while all bruns aren't marron.
I wouldn't use marron for dark hairs, for example. But I've never debated that, so it might be just my use.
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Here's what wiktionary has to say:
En France métropolitaine, dans le premier sens indiqué, le mot brun est plus fréquemment utilisé dans l'arc nord-est du pays tandis que le mot marron l'a presque supplanté ailleurs. Au Canada, en Suisse et en Belgique, le mot brun est plus fréquemment utilisé pour ce sens que marron.
Le premier sens = non-hair usage.
En France métropolitaine, dans le premier sens indiqué, le mot brun est plus fréquemment utilisé dans l'arc nord-est du pays tandis que le mot marron l'a presque supplanté ailleurs. Au Canada, en Suisse et en Belgique, le mot brun est plus fréquemment utilisé pour ce sens que marron.
Le premier sens = non-hair usage.
I wouldn't either, and I don't think I've ever heard it!
I find it funny though that marron isn't used for any type of hair (at least not the common ones), but a related word, châtain, is.
By the way, I said I was an "almost exclusive" user of marron: not completely because, leaving aside its use for the hair color, I do tend to use brun for some darker shades, particularly when it has to do with nature for some reason (the color of some leaves for instance). That's a relatively recent change in my idiolect, as I never used that word when I was young (again, other than for the hair color).
That is, funnily, an archetypal exemple of the usual meaning of brun: "D'une couleur qui rappelle celle des feuilles mortes" (Trésor).
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Another thing I'm mildly dissatisfied with in this curriculum: it makes heavy use of songs which don't appeal much to me or the students, such as "Là òu je vais" by Judith or "On court" by Yannick Noah. Sometimes I'm surprised, though, and the students like them. They're much happier with children's songs or traditional songs because the weight of deciding whether or not they're cool is removed.
I didn't know the former but yeah not my cup of tea either way. I don't find them particularly interesting lyrically either, but to each their own I guess.
It's only now when reading the title of the second song through your quote that I understand it's french and not english (which made a lot of sense with his previous career).
That’s probably why they were chosen: simple, repetitive words.
Hm yes, it's probably hard to strike the right balance between simplicity and interestingness, which is highly subjective anyway. Still, I don't think the balance is quite right in this case, but that may also be because I really don't dig these songs on a purely musical basis.
No, they’re boring. Folk songs or classical are better choices because anything older than six months (in pop) seems hopelessly out of date to teenagers anyway.
Surely that's intentional?
Now that you mention it, I think I've seen "homemade" a few times. How dumb. Perhaps they thought "fait maison" sounded too Grandma's-recipes-like, but "homemade" makes it sound like it's anything but homemade, to me.
English is the International language of trade, business, money, and material wealth, hence to commercial and advertising jargon. The first thought of (mediocre) French commercials who want to communicate on something is generally to name it in English, even when it isn't a specific concept. And it isn't unusual that French commercials content themselves of their first thought.
So, to read "homemade" in a French sentence, instead of fait maison (which isn't a beautiful construction neither, I find) doesn't surprise me at all. It is quite common in France. Remember that the French president of the Republic used to officially describe democracy this way: La démocratie est le système le plus bottom up de la Terre.
That is one of the consequence of what some might label "Anglo-American imperialism" and others "Anglo-American soft-power", "cultural influence" or whatever, and which designates the same reality.
Perhaps is it a bit different in Belgium? I thought that English was also quite present to avoid the French-Flemish language struggle...
So, to read "homemade" in a French sentence, instead of fait maison (which isn't a beautiful construction neither, I find) doesn't surprise me at all. It is quite common in France. Remember that the French president of the Republic used to officially describe democracy this way: La démocratie est le système le plus bottom up de la Terre.
That is one of the consequence of what some might label "Anglo-American imperialism" and others "Anglo-American soft-power", "cultural influence" or whatever, and which designates the same reality.
Perhaps is it a bit different in Belgium? I thought that English was also quite present to avoid the French-Flemish language struggle...
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No, Anglicisms are all over the place.
That may be true in occasional instances.
Yup. I'm fine with Anglicisms in general. I use them all the time. The ones I don't like tend to have something in common: they don't come from regular French speakers, but rather from admen or the like. Not a natural evolution of the language, but a conscious, calculated choice to rebrand something old as something modern and cool, most of the time.